{"id":74937,"date":"2021-12-01T20:09:56","date_gmt":"2021-12-02T02:09:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=74937"},"modified":"2021-12-01T20:09:56","modified_gmt":"2021-12-02T02:09:56","slug":"74937","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=74937","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

How to Lie About Guns, New York Times Style<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the easiest ways to lie and not get sued for libel is to simply do so through exclusion. The\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0is famous for this and if you don\u2019t know enough about guns they can make things sound pretty bad, just by leaving out a little bit of information. In the wake of the Kyle Rittenhouse Verdict we ought to brush up on the tactics of far-left media. To do so, we simply just need to look to the past. Back in March of 2021, I found an article so egregious that I decided to go ahead and fill in the blanks. I believe the resulting work should be saved and used to inform anybody who is arguing for more gun control without all of the facts. For reference the original article can be found here:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/03\/24\/us\/ruger-ar-556-boulder-shooting.html<\/a><\/p>\n

You\u2019ll see that the author is attempting to paint Ruger\u2019s AR-15 pistol and the 5.56 round in a darker light than it deserves.<\/p>\n

The article opens with the basic facts and uses that tired old phrases like \u201cmilitary-style semiautomatic rifle and pistol.\u201d Of course, the author leaves out that they are \u201cmilitary-style\u201d in appearance only. Camouflaging a Kia doesn\u2019t make it an M1 Abrams tank. As the piece starts to \u201cdevelop,\u201d the author also goes on to write, \u201cStatements from the police and the charging documents did not make it clear which of the weapons was used in the attack, but it appeared at least one is a semiautomatic derivative of the assault rifles that have long been used by the American military.\u201d<\/p>\n

For starters, holy long sentence Batman. I had to read it a few times to keep up with it all, leaving just the catchphrases like \u201cassault rifles\u201d and \u201cAmerican military\u201d to stand out. However, if you read it a few times you pick up what is being said. The guns being referenced are derivatives as opposed to copies because they are semi-automatic, like a common pistol. This is unlike the military\u2019s fully automatic M4 carbines. Only folks who know guns are going to know that and only a few are going to be that dedicated to pull all of that from this poorly structured sentence.<\/p>\n

Later on, I found what is arguably the poorest display of journalism in the entire article. The author goes on to state, \u201cAccording to a police affidavit, the suspect charged with 10 counts of murder, Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, bought a Ruger AR-556 semiautomatic weapon, essentially a shortened version of an AR-15 style rifle marketed as a pistol, six days before the killings took place. It is also unclear if that weapon was used in the shooting on Monday.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wait\u2026if\u00a0 it\u2019s \u201cunclear\u201d that this gun was used at all, why does this article include this statement? Actually, why is there even an article entitled \u201cWhat we know about the gun used in the Boulder shooting\u201d in existence? The\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0didn\u2019t need 284 words to put this piece together, thanks to this statement I can do it with just one, \u201cNothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

About halfway through is where I found the most manipulative piece of information and this is where the author states \u201cBoth the AR-15 style rifle and the Ruger version fire the same small-caliber, high-velocity ammunition, which was first developed for battlefield use.\u201d Sure, the 5.56 was built for the military\u2026 To replace the current, larger cartridge that was regarded as uncontrollable and too powerful for common battlefield use! I\u2019ve had enough with media like this trying to make the 5.56 round out to be some sort of baby-killing monster. It\u2019s one of the least-potent centerfire rifle rounds on the market, considered by most to be too small even for deer hunting. Is it more powerful than a pistol round? Sure, but almost any given rifle has more power than any given handgun.<\/p>\n

As things begin to wrap up the author proceeds to attempt to make large-format pistols look like the \u201cideal\u201d tool for mass shootings where she says \u201cBased on their size, \u2018AR pistols\u2019 are much easier to conceal than a typical AR-15 carbine or rifle. According to the\u00a0manufacturer\u2019s website<\/a>, the Ruger AR-556 pistol comes with either a 9.5-inch or 10.5 inch-long barrel, while a typical AR-15 has at least a 16-inch barrel.\u201d Pretty convenient that she left out the fact that common pistols have barrels from 2 to 6 inches and are capable of the same rate of fire and in most cases, capacity. So although an AR Pistol is easier to conceal than a rifle or shotgun, it\u2019s far less concealable than many other semi-automatic firearms.<\/p>\n

As a New Yorker, I have been conditioned to read between the lines and sadly that\u2019s where you are going to find the facts in dribble like this. It\u2019s a shame that our publication doesn\u2019t reach the same people who read the\u00a0Times<\/em>, because it would be nice to give the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u2019s readership a complete and balanced idea of what that this firearm is\u2014and more importantly what it isn\u2019t. This, my friends, is why we must remain vigilant and never shy away from the conversation. We can only change an informed mind and that duty lies squarely at our feet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How to Lie About Guns, New York Times Style One of the easiest ways to lie and not get sued for libel is to simply do so through exclusion. The\u00a0New York Times\u00a0is famous for this and if you don\u2019t know enough about guns they can make things sound pretty bad, just by leaving out a … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64,75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deceit","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74937"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74938,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74937\/revisions\/74938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}